Ensemble Restaurant

Dale MacKay

Executive Chef, Proprietor

Before opening ensemble in May, 2011, Canada's first 'Top Chef Canada', Dale MacKay worked kitchen front lines and opened restaurants for top chefs Gordon Ramsay and Daniel Boulud.  For the unassuming, overachieving MacKay, ensemble represents the culmination of his life’s work.  Hard work.

Dale is a prairie boy, born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1979. From the time he was 17 years old, he was singularly focused on proving to himself and to his family that he could become a great Canadian chef with his own unique culinary style and voice.  His experience runs a gamut of challenge and profile, from the anonymity of Private Chefing in Italy, to assuming the title of the Youngest Grand Chef in the World (at age 27, of 160 globally) as Executive Chef of the Five Diamond, Grand Relais & Chateau Lumière, in Vancouver, and most recently to a widely publicized battle for culinary supremacy on Food Network Canada's Top Chef Canada.

Ironically, his love affair with kitchens began in Vancouver just a few doors north of his ensemble address – at a chain diner where he worked briefly as a fry cook­­­­­.  Soon after, armed only with a fistful of dollars and unbridled enthusiasm, Dale set off to London, England – with no appointment, no formal culinary training and no resume - to ask Chef Gordon Ramsay for a job in his Chelsea restaurant kitchen.

Some seven years, five restaurants and 30,000 hell’s kitchen hours later, Dale had ascended to the top of his field.  As Ramsay’s protégé, he’d worked in London at Claridge’s Hotel and at the three-Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and in Tokyo at The Conrad Tokyo Hotel. Before returning to Canada, Dale worked as Executive Sous Chef at the London NYC Hotel, overseeing Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Maze Restaurant, private dining and room service.

Chef MacKay moved back to Vancouver in 2007 and worked as Executive Chef at Lumière. In December of 2008, Dale became Executive Chef of both Lumière and db bistro moderne Vancouver (sister to NY Chef Daniel Bouluds's db bistro moderne NYC, Miami  and Singapore), and remained there honing his craft and his reputation for applying classical French technique to pacific northwest ingredients, until the restaurants closed their doors in March of 2011.

One week later, Dale announced the May 2011 opening of ensemble, and one month later, Top Chef Canada began airing on the Food Network.  Having consolidated a career’s worth of lessons, mistakes, opportunities and successes into the previous 13 years, Dale knew exactly what he wanted for his first restaurant.   “My life as a Chef and as a single father to my young son Ayden taught me so much of what I need to know about people and opening my own restaurant … that is, surround myself with intensely talented, creative, disciplined, impassioned, authentic people I can trust, and empower them to shine as key players on a successful team – a.k.a. ensemble. Finally, lead by example and work harder than anyone else.”  In July 4, 2011, Dale was named Top Chef Canada - the country's first.

When Dale is not in the kitchen or on the floor at ensemble, he and Ayden keep busy doing homework, exploring the city, and visiting family and friends. He is committed to passing his good fortune forward, mentoring young men, and working with aspiring young chefs.

For an up close and personal look at the private life of a Chef, view Dale’s Top Chef Canada audition video.

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